Sweden’s prime
minister has admitted his country has been “naive” about Islamist
extremism even as it expects to receive a record number of refugees
this year.

Stefan Löfven told
a hastily called press conference on Thursday that both the previous
centre-right government and his Social Democrat administration have
misjudged the threat and that Sweden would now have to step up its
security measures.

“Perhaps it has
been hard for us to accept that in our midst there are people
sympathising with the Isis killers,” he said.

Sweden raised its
terror alert to high for the first time on Wednesday as it revealed a
suspected terrorist was thought to have entered the country to carry
out an attack.

The Nordic country
receives more asylum seekers per capita than any other European
country. It is on course to take in close to 200,000 this year with
more than 10,000 alone arriving last week.

While Sweden has
long prided itself on its generous stance, many commentators are now
questioning the wisdom of this, pointing at problems with integration
to overstretched local authorities and security forces.

Mikael Holmström, a
journalist at Dagens Nyheter, this week wrote an opinion piece “The
Swedish readiness for terror is the worst in 20 years” where he
argued that the police are facing three new tasks: dealing with
refugees, arson attacks against them and potential terrorism.

“Sweden has
escaped war for 200 years, which is encouraging. But it also creates
a feeling of standing away from the rest of the world and that
nothing evil can happen to us,” said Mr Holmström.

Among the measures
Mr Löfven plans to introduce are allowing authorities to secretly
monitor data, the increased use of security cameras, biometric
controls of passports as well as more funding for security services.

Sweden has in recent
weeks brought in border controls and is considering no longer
accepting Syrian passports as valid identification owing to
widespread use of forgeries.